Kindle Edition Download to your Nook (eBook) Download from Smashwords (eBook) Amazon Barnes & Noble.com Taylor's Hole in the Web SmashWords Sony Category:  Crime Publisher: CreateSpace ISBN-10:  1467927171 Type: Non-Fiction Pages: 316 Copyright: November 2008 ISBN-13: 9781467927178 In this true crime memoir, former Houston Post reporter Gary Taylor recounts his true-life fatal attraction involvement in the trail of violence that has dogged Texas attorney Catherine Mehaffey Shelton for nearly three decades, prompting coverage by newspapers, TV, movies and even Oprah Winfrey. Now Taylor invites readers to grab a seat on the wild ride of an obsessive relationship: erotic beginning to violent end and the trials required to clean up the mess. The result is an adventure odyssey of self-discovery through an encounter that nearly cost him his life. From Self-Publishing Review  by author Randall Radic February 4, 2009 Remember the movie “Fatal Attraction”?  And the movie “Basic Instinct”?  And the movie “Play Misty For Me”?  Toss all three of the movies in a blender, hit frappe and stand back.  What comes out would be Gary Taylor’s new book – Luggage By Kroger. LBK is the story of Gary’s intimate relationship with Catherine Mehaffey, which began way back in 1979.  As the story opens, Mehaffey is suing her live-in lover for half of everything he has.  No, they weren’t married.  Mehaffey claimed they were some bizarre version of common-law husband and wife, therefore, she was entitled to sue for divorce and get half her husband’s money.  Before the divorce hearing can take place, Mehaffey’s live-in lover husband turns up dead.  Somebody beat him to death with a pipe (or some other equally gruesome blunt instrument). Now Mehaffey wants the entire estate and the money from the life insurance policy.  And did I mention that Mehaffey is a person of interest to the Houston Police Department.  In fact, they consider her their prime suspect. By the way, did I mention that this is a true story.  This is not fiction. Enter Gary Taylor, who is a reporter for the Houston Post.  He’s trying to write a story on the whole Mehaffey/murder/quasi-marriage/dead lover/who might be a former husband.  Taylor gets shall we say “involved” with Mehaffey.  They have lots of steamy sexual interludes.  As the freak show, which is called a “relationship” (sounds like a disease), moves along, Taylor begins to wonder about his new girlfriend.  What he wonders is if she’s just psychosocial or fully psychotic.  It’s obvious to Taylor that Mehaffey killed her previous live-in lover. And it isn’t too long before Mehaffey takes aim – literally – at Taylor.  She tries to kill him.  I won’t describe it, but it involves a .32 caliber handgun, a screaming harridan, and Taylor running away as fast as he can. LBK is a great book.  It’s well-written, which means that it moves along and doesn’t get bogged down in nonsense that isn’t pertinent to the story.  And Taylor’s voice, which is funny in a I-can’t-believe-I-did-this-and-lived kind of way, entertains without trying to deliberately prove he should have been a comedian. Did I mention another tidbit?  It’s a self-published book, which is hard to tell because somebody did a good job of editing the text.  And somebody (the same person?) did a wonderful job copy-editing the text.  I couldn’t find one typo or glitch in punctuation.  Most self-publishers don’t put that kind of time and attention into their final product.  The self-publishers forget that when readers pay 20 bucks or more for a book, they want their money’s worth.  Taylor provides it. The title – Luggage By Kroger – was just weird enough to catch my eye.  The more I think about the title, the more I like it.  Luggage By Kroger is worth the price of admission.  In fact, in my semi-humble opinion, some BIG BOY publisher in the Big Apple should pick it up and publish it in hardcover (with a more lucid cover photo), then sell the paperback rights, then sell the translation rights and maybe do a movie-option deal with Warner Brothers or MGM.  If they do, and it all comes true, I want 5 points on the back end of the movie as my middleman’s fee. I’ll see you in Hawaii, if it comes true.  I’ll be guy working on his tan, drinking one of those fruity-alcoholic-concoctions-with-an-umbrella in it. Short review summary:  buy this book.  It’s sick! as the hip kids say. Excerpt FORTY-NINE January 14, 1980 "Your psycho girlfriend is over here in the newsroom right now." "Ahh, shit," I mumbled after answering the phone and receiving that whispered message from Ed Jahn, a colleague on the city desk at The Post building. Ed had called me about two hours after deputies evicted Catherine from the courthouse press room. I speculated she must have launched a Plan B in an attempt to trample me at work. "She's in Logan's office pacing around and telling him all about something, probably you," Ed said, laughing in awkward amusement. "Now she's waving her arms and pointing in his face." As our managing editor, Logan worked in an office with glass walls that allowed him to monitor the staff. Now they also allowed my scout to monitor him. I figured Logan had never seen anything like Catherine. I had to laugh as I imagined him listening to a tirade similar to what had just occurred in the press room. "It looks like she's leaving now," said Ed. "Now she's stopped and answering a question. Now she's turned and left, and he looks pretty confused." Logan called me at the courthouse with a succinct command: "Gary, I need you to just stop whatever you might be doing and come into the office. Just get up, get in your car, and come over here." "What's up?" I asked about fifteen minutes later, feigning ignorance as I took a seat across the desk from my boss. "I'll get right to the point," he said. "I had an interesting visit a little while ago from a lawyer named Catherine Mehaffey, and she had some disturbing things to say about you. She believes you are working secretly for the district attorney's office as an investigator in a case against her. She says you've made tape recordings of conversations with her and shared them with outsiders." "I recorded her telephone conversations threatening me," I replied. "OK," he said, "Here's what I have to do. Mary Flood is on her way over to the courthouse to relieve you there—" "Aw, c'mon," I raised my voice interrupting him. "Nope, it is already done," he said. "But you should know something she told me right before she left. I asked her what she wanted me to do about any of this, and she just got this strange, faraway look in her eyes and said, 'I just want him to disappear.'" We stood there a moment considering that until I shrugged my shoulders and moved to the door. "So, go on, get your new desk, and welcome back to the newsroom," Logan said as I left. That night at home I picked up a ringing phone to hear her voice and hung up before she could finish a sentence. For the next two hours the phone rang repeatedly, but I did not answer. She would be easy to ignore now that I no longer needed to visit the courthouse daily. I believed I might never see her again. Later, after studying the psychology of the narcissist personality, however, I would learn that my new strategy had merely set the stage for an escalation. I had denied her the one thing she actually needed most: confrontation.

Midwest Book Review April 2009
Sometimes, pursuit of the opposite sex makes men do strange things. "Luggage by Kroger: A True Crime Memoir" is author Gary Taylor's memoir of his adventures with a woman whose actions were not exactly of the legal variety. A former newspaper reporter who got involved with a notorious criminal attorney, Gary Taylor tells a riveting true story, one that reads like a high-octane crime thriller, of a man who was as law abiding as they come, and how his lust began to threaten his family. "Luggage by Kroger" is fascinating, highly recommended reading.

True Crime Book Reviews October 25, 2009
Many true crime reviews claim a book to be an extremely raw account of crime, but that statement has never been so true as it is with Luggage by Kroger from author Gary Taylor.

As a matter of fact, I found the writing to be so raw that at times I didn't know whether I wanted to sympathize with Taylor or slap him silly.

Gary Taylor walked through a literal hell-on-earth with the psychotic Catherine Mehaffey, yet came out with such a sanguine attitude you can't help but to admire him.

Before reading Luggage by Kroger, I had read others' reviews. I recall one in particular that stated the book contained too much filler. I'm not sure to what the reviewer was referring.

In the beginning it may seem that Taylor is providing too much information about his life - even a bit braggadocio at times - but as one continues reading it becomes obvious these details are important to understanding how Taylor came to be in such precarious circumstances.

I found Luggage by Kroger to be a thought-provoking, emotion-inducing, addictive tale that sucked me in much like Catherine Mehaffey sucked author Gary Taylor into her deranged life.

This award winning true crime gem is highly recommended for your reading list. You don't want to miss it! (Reviewed by Kimberly Cantrell)


Reader Views March 2009
Gary Taylor’s “Luggage by Kroger” recounts a true crime story in which the author was involved in the late 70s and very early 80s. While working as a reporter for one of the main Houston newspapers, Gary met Catherine Mehaffey, a young and attractive attorney, who has been one of the main suspects in the brutal murder of her common-law husband, Dr. George Tedesco. Tedesco had been found dead shortly after Mehaffey started the court proceedings to acquire half of everything he owned. Fully aware of Catherine Mehaffey’s story and the potential implications, Taylor got involved with her and spent four incredibly intense and rather insane months in a weird relationship with a clearly unstable and dangerous woman. While it is obvious from the story that nowadays Taylor realizes that what could have passed for affection, infatuation or even love was Catherine’s truly insane need to possess and control, I could not help but wish he would have figured that out sooner. But then there would have been no story… and what a story it turned out to be!
First things first – Taylor can definitely write. Starting from the intriguing title, the book pulls the reader in and does not let go. Taylor’s writing is rich and powerful, almost brutal at times and always direct. There’s no whitewashing going on – the language is oftentimes graphic and adult, and some of the sex scenes quite explicit. The violence abounds, both direct and implied. The suspense is tangible. All of that is nicely balanced with Taylor’s sense of humor and his ability to laugh at himself – often.
For some strange reason – and one I cannot figure out exactly – I felt detached from the story and I did not get as emotionally involved in it as I would have expected to in the case of a true crime memoir. Part of it might have been the abundance of background stories on the author himself with the minute details of his earlier life, which I found too loosely connected to the main story to be of real interest to me and as such I’d prefer to have the book shortened by a good 100 pages and more condensed. The other part was probably my sheer disbelief in view of all the warning signs that Taylor chose not to really take into account, plunging into great tumult and endangering not only himself, but also all those near and dear to him. It is not that I do not believe that the story really happened – it has been documented enough to be extremely believable, it is more that I’d prefer to think that humans would be able to think just a bit more clearly at all times.
Although Gary Taylor’s “Luggage by Kroger” is a self-published book, it is extremely professionally done. There is no doubt that it was edited, copyedited and proofread. The potential for another great movie is there as well and it would not surprise me to see it on the big screen one of those days. Gary Taylor certainly deserves that.